About

Artist Statement﻿﻿﻿﻿A Modern Medieval Bestiary We humans are so urbanized now that it is difficult to imagine the lives of animals. When we succeed we have usually an anthropomorphic view of them. It is our natural way of recognizing their uniqueness and their innate powers that, deep in our psyche, still have such a hold on our mind.

The Fables of Jean de La Fontaine speak of that human-animal relationship brilliantly, while keeping a sharp eye on the real nature of things. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses humans who try to match wits with the gods are often turned into animals of all sorts. Proverbs about women, especially with regard to animals, reveal the human imagination thinking and saying outlandish things! These and other old stories are a part of my inspiration because they are so visually rich and still resonate so deeply in human nature that I find them irresistible. One humorous or intriguing line is enough to spark an entire sculpture; albeit with signs and symbols. A Grimm’sFairy-tale? Just the (warty) nose of the witch is the lock on the golden cage where she keeps young girls and turns them into birds. Chicken Little? A star around the neck, clouds around the legs, the moon at her feet tells us that – the sky has fallen.

In the natural world Constantine Christofides and I did live for ten years on a farm in Southern France. We had dogs, rabbits, sheep, mice, foxes, wild boars snorting under the almond tree at 3AM – cicadas, bats, snakes, toads, owls, glow-worms, lizards, magpies, millepedes and ghosts of dinosaurs. And speaking of other eras, the most pre-historic, gigantic dragon-fly flew at 5am in our apartment window in New York City. The wolf eel is a memory from my scuba diving days in Puget Sound.

While humans have been making depictions of animals for at least 35,000 years, Webster defines Bestiary as a medieval treatise or artistic representation of animals, real or legendary. Those bestiaries were full of wildly imagined creatures. Mine not so much until my Year of the Goat Coloring Book. As early morning and evening light would cross ceramic pieces on my drawing table, entirely odd and rather fabulous beasts would emerge that I knew I hadn’t put there. Drawings in this menagerie represent new stories that these vessels have to tell.

BiographyKoren Christofides, born in Kansas, grew up in Seattle Washington. She received her BA Art History, BFA Painting and MFA Printmaking from the University of Washington where she studied with Jacob Lawrence. An extensive traveler her work has long been informed by world mythologies.

Upon moving to France (1997-2009), where she was an artist in residence for the Maryland Institute College of Art (at the Institut Américain Universitaire, Aix-en-Provence) she organized an international, traveling exhibition of 100 artists from the USA, Europe and Asia on the Fables of La Fontaine (Aix-en-Provence, Rome, Seattle and Baltimore). A selection of fables and images from this exhibition resulted in a new edition of Fables of La Fontaine Illustrated published by the University of Washington Press Seattle/London, 2006. This widely reviewed book, including Le Monde (Le Monde des Livres, September 8, 2006) and the Journal of Folklore Research (May 2007) was awarded the Certificate of Excellence for book design and images by Bookbuilders West, San Francisco, 36th Annual Book Show.

While working on the Fables book Koren Christofides turned her attention to the Contes (erotic tales) of La Fontaine. In 2005 she exhibited 50 paintings based on a single conte, ‘‘The King of Africa’s Bride,’’ at the Centre d’Art et de Culture, Aix-en-Provence.

Since 2007 her work has turned to Proverbs, specifically about women, from all around the world.